


Leap

by Time_Testudinem (Turtle)



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-28
Updated: 2008-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:11:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turtle/pseuds/Time_Testudinem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a story of the beginning and the end, but they aren't what's important, it was the bits in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leap

**Author's Note:**

> If everybody dies, is it still a happy ending? I think so, but consider yourself warned. Also a 2.08 spoiler, I guess

Sam Tyler ran. Left foot right foot, faster and faster, and as he picked up speed the blanket of numbness that had engulfed him since he woke up was torn from his body by the passing air. Slowly, bit by bit as he crossed that roof, he began to feel. The elation of it, like feeling rushing back in to limbs long asleep, it hurt in the most beautiful way. By the time he ran out of roof, he didn't care if he was wrong, if this took him nowhere but the street below, at least he got to feel this. Sam opened his arms, smiled at the sun, and leaped into the unknown.

*****

In the street below, a man waited. And as he watched Sam allowed himself to feel the sadness that had been absent the last time he had lived this day. Not that he could regret it. Not when it had given him so much. The better and the worse, he had lived it all, felt every bit, every moment. And he hadn't had to feel alone.

He had tried to say goodbye to Gene that morning, but it had been impossible to explain. Gene was an old man now. The body was weakened, the mind even beginning to fog, but the spirit was as strong as ever, and Sam knew he would have a hell of a fight on his hands if he told Gene he was leaving. So he had contented himself with an unusually tender kiss, and a warm hug that earned him an extended rant on acting like "nancy assed poofters". But Sam was leaving, no matter what he or Gene might wish, and Sam had wanted a proper goodbye. Just like he wanted to be here to see this. And despite the fact that it meant he would never go home to the man he had left behind this morning, Sam couldn't be sorry for the leap that the young man on the roof was about to take. That leap had given him his life.

And as the man on the roof grew closer to the edge, Sam felt a half-remembered feeling of exquisite painful joy wash though him, and he opened his arms to his younger self in greeting as he embraced the death he had dealt himself 33 years ago. With a smile on his lips, Sam took his own leap into the unknown.

****

Down the street, hidden from view in an antique Cortina, and old man watched with clouded green eyes. He was no longer supposed to be driving, license long taken away, but what exactly were they going to do about it, eh? Not much left to take away from him, and after today there would be nothing at all. He intended to ride out to meet this the same way he had so many other things, behind the wheel of a damn fine car.

Did the obnoxious picky-pain nancy twat think he was completely daft? That he had missed that little farewell ballet this morning. That he hadn't suspected something by the time Luke Skywalker first pursued a princess across the silver screen. That he hadn't been sure when Sam had bought him his first "mobile" and laid it in his hand with eyes so bright and eager and full of dreams Gene never understood. The world he knew was gone, eaten away bit by bit until there was nothing left, nothing familiar. The only thing that made this new world bearable, was that it was Sam's world. The world that had made him, if not the world that he belonged to. Because Sam didn't belong in this world, not really, he belonged to Gene, he belonged with Gene. And Gene had no wish to have any part of this shiny, techno obsessed, by-the-book world if it didn't contain Sam Tyler.

So he watched, and as young met old on the street before him, Gene raised the gun from his lap. "Not leaving me behind so easy Sammy". And with one last holler for his beautiful, stubborn, amazing, frustrating, impossible DI to just "wait for me already". Gene leaped.


End file.
